This paper tests Margaret Canovan’s influential argument that populism emerges from a tension between what she called democracy’s pragmatic and redemptive faces. Using cross-national survey evidence, the authors evaluate whether indicators of pragmatic politics reduce (or increase) support for populist parties and movements, offering one of the first empirical assessments of Canovan’s theoretical claim.
EVS/WVS Integrated Values Surveys used, operationalization of pragmatic politics: consensual democracy, globalization, checks on government, mostly null or contrary results
Data and methods
The study draws on the EVS/WVS Integrated Values Surveys to operationalize key concepts. The authors measure support for populist parties and construct indicators intended to capture “pragmatic politics” — including measures they describe as consensual democracies, economic and political globalization, and institutional checks on government — and then test associations between these measures and populist support across cases.
Main findings
Analyses largely fail to find the expected relationships implied by Canovan’s framework. The authors report mostly non-significant associations between their pragmatic-politics indicators and support for populist parties; when statistically significant effects appear, they point in directions opposite to Canovan’s predictions. The paper treats these results as a challenge to longstanding assumptions and proposes directions for further work.
- Uses cross-national survey evidence rather than case studies.
- Finds predominantly null results, with some significant estimates contrary to Canovan’s claims.
